An Outdoorsy Ascent

Hi Readers,

Yesterday I went with NS and a couple of other people we met at the ARC rock climbing wall to go climbing in Jackson Falls, in southern Illinois. It was the first time doing outdoor climbing for both NS and myself, and we were pretty psyched. I almost said "no" when the offer was first made, but then I thought, "mehwhatthehellwhynotyouonlylivelifeonce......" It turned out to be an awesome decision!

We left at 6am. It was probably the earliest I've been up in at least half a year, so I was yawning the whole car ride down. We got there at around 10, and it was already soooooo hot. Ditched the jackets, grabbed the water bottles, and we started our trek out to Mr. Jimmy's, which is a giant cliff with many climbs. Along the way us noobs discovered from the pros (CK and EP) that southern Illinois is peppered with awesome climbs. Who knew?!? Certainly couldn't tell from the FLAT CORN-NESS that is Illinois.

We started with a route called "Luscious Babes" (5.8), moved on to "Venom" (5.10a), "Chicken Shack" (5.6), "Chimichonga" (5.8), "Deetle Dumps" (5.8), and "Meanest Flower" (5.9). For those of you who don't know rock climbing lingo, the 5.x levels rank rock climbing. A 5.1 is akin to a steep hill that you walk up, a 5.4 is probably scrambling over boulders, 5.6 is vertical but pretty easy, and apparently nobody has done more than a 5.15 here before. Below are some of the routes that we did (I didn't take pictures for others), so you can imagine what the rating system is like.

5.8 - "Luscious Babes"

5.8 - "Chimichonga"

5.10a - "Venom"

5.6 - "Chicken Shack"

Since it was the first time that I had climbed outdoors, I was nervous as hell and not sure what to expect. Mostly I was afraid of failing and having others laugh at me. But luckily enough, it wasn't so bad! I guess all those hours in the ARC climbing wall paid off after all! I was able to all except one of the climbs that the others could do, and it was amazingly fun. The difficulty levels seemed easier than the ones at the ARC, the holds were almost always easier to hold onto than on the artificial rock wall, just because they are real rocks, and I loved being able to just go up a wall and not have to worry about, "oh this rock belongs to this route and that rock is off-limits." It did make for a very interesting phenomenon, where everybody would get up a route using different methods, and get stuck at different spots because of that.

This was also the first time that NS and I tried lead climbing (in addition to top-rope), another technical jargon. In rock climbing there are many types of climbing. "Top-rope climbing" refers to the fact that your anchor rope is all the way at the top of the route, so when you are climbing and fall, you stop immediately where you are. "Lead climbing" refers to a method where you are starting your climb without any anchors. There are various anchors scattered throughout the route on the way up, and you clip your rope into these anchors as you go up. It is scarier than top-rope because if you fall, there is the possibility of you falling a longer way down, since you will fall underneath the last anchor that you clipped into. An analogy of these two styles would be the concept of respawning in a video game. Top-rope climbing would be analogous to the situation where if you die, you "restart" at the exact same spot and continue on. Lead climbing would be akin to a "checkpoint" system, where you respawn at the last checkpoint you passed. We are very thankful for CK and EP for teaching us how to do lead climbing, because we had been curious about it for awhile.

It got quite hot out as midday came and went, and it got progressively more humid until we were sweating even just standing in the shade. However, we did not let it bother us too much, since we were armed with our chalk bags. We stayed out there from 10am until 7pm, when it began to get dark out. In the process, everybody got in ~6 climbs and we had a blast. Ended the day at Steak n Shake with burgers and milkshakes. It was an awesome day. =)

-FCDH